The purpose of this article is to discuss the concept of community as a methodological tool in the absence of a face-to-face interaction context. Our perspective emphasizes the constitutive role of the researcher and his or her methods in creating communities in any kind of social research. In our case study of research that we conducted in a private medical centre in Barcelona, we show how Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) users were ‘imagined’ as a community through the use of press clippings as mediation tool in the ethnographic interview.
AgarM (1983) Towards an ethnographic language. American Anthropologist84(4): 119–195.
2.
AndersonB (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
3.
AppaduraiA (1996) Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
4.
AskewKWilkR (2002) The Anthropology of Media. A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
5.
BourdieuP (1997) Sur la télévision. Paris: Liber Éditions.
6.
BrunerJ (1990) Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
7.
BurrellJ (2009) The field site as a network: A strategy for locating ethnographic research. Field Methods21(2): 181–199.
8.
CicourelAV (1992) The interpenetration of communicative contexts: Examples from medical encounters. In: DurantiAGoodwinC (eds.) Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
9.
CliffordJ (1988) The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
CsordasTJ (1994) Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11.
DilleyRM (1999) The Problem of Context. London and New York: Bergham Books.
12.
EdwardsJ (1999) Explicit connections: Ethnographic enquiry in north-west England. In: EdwardsJFranklinSHirschEPriceFStrathernM (eds.) Technologies of Procreation. Kinship in the Age of Assisted Conception2nd ednLondon: Routledge.
13.
FabianJ (1983) Time and the Other. How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.
14.
FabianJ (1995) Ethnographic misunderstanding and the perils of context. American Anthropologist97(1): 41–50.
15.
García GarcíaJL (2000) Informar y narrar: El análisis de los discursos en las investigaciones de campo. Revista de Antropología Social9: 75–104.
16.
GoffmanE (1974) Frame Analysis. New York: Harper & Row.
17.
GuptaAFergusonJ (1997) Discipline and practice: ‘The field’ as site, method and location in anthropology. In: GuptaAFergusonJ (eds.) Anthropological Locations. Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press.
18.
HirschE (1999) Negotiated limits. Interviews in south-east England. In: EdwardsJFranklinSHirschEPriceFStrathernM (eds.) Technologies of Procreation. Kinship in the Age of Assisted Conception2nd ednLondon: Routledge.
19.
JenkinsNBloorMFischerJBerneyLNealeJ (2010) Putting it in context: The use of vignettes in qualitative interviewing. Qualitative Research10(2): 175–198.
20.
JenkinsT (1994) Fieldwork and the perception of everyday life. Man (N.S.)29(2): 433–455.
21.
MarcusGE (1998) Ethnography Through Thick and Thin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
22.
MarcusGEFisherMJ (1986) Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
23.
MelhuusM (2009) Conflicting notions of continuity and belongings. Assisted reproduction and practices in Norway. Social Analysis53(3): 148–162.
24.
RedfieldR (1989) The Little Community and Peasant Society and Culture. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.
25.
SchleckerMHirschE (2001) Incomplete knowledge: Ethnography and the crisis of context in studies of media, science and technology. History of the Human Sciences14(1): 69–87.
26.
SchutzA (1970) On Phenomenology and Social Relations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
27.
SeatonEE (2008) Common knowledge: Reflections on narratives in community. Qualitative Research8(3): 293–305.
28.
TaylorC (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
